Description

LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NONFICTION

No matter where we live, ‘we are all ocean people,’ Helen Scales observes in her bracing yet hopeful exploration of the future of the ocean. Beginning with its fascinating deep history, Scales links past to present to show how prehistoric ocean ecology holds lessons for the ocean of today.

In elegant, evocative prose, she takes us into the realms of animals that epitomize current increasingly challenging conditions, from emperor penguins to sharks and orcas. Yet despite these threats, many hopeful signs remain, in the form of highly protected reserves, the regeneration of seagrass meadows and giant kelp forests and efforts to protect coral reefs.

Offering innovative ideas for protecting coastlines and cleaning the toxic seas, Scales insists we need more ethical and sustainable fisheries and must prevent the other existential threat of deep-sea mining. Inspiring us all to maintain a sense of awe and wonder at the majesty beneath the waves, she urges us to fight for the better future that still exists for the ocean.

Publisher Review

Authoritative and entertaining…a passionate look at how saving the seas is an essential part of saving ourselves…The author’s writing is lucid and compelling, featuring a nice mix of personal experience and convincing scientific data * Kirkus Reviews * In What the Wild Sea Can Be Helen Scales has created something remarkable: a thrillingly expansive, deeply personal and often startlingly beautiful portrait of the ocean and its inhabitants that also charts a path to a better and more sustainable world. Urgent, exhilarating and marvellously researched and written, it is necessary reading for anybody who cares about the future of the planet — James Bradley, author of DEEP WATER Here is one of our greatest communicators whose brilliance as a scientist is matched by her sublime skill as a writer. Helen Scales paints a dazzling picture of our seas from top to bottom and all around the edges to show us why – and how – we must protect them. She is not afraid to spell out what we stand to lose if we don’t change our ways, and it is terrifying… This is a book of love and urgency and sense. What the Wild Sea Can Be dives deep into the titanic power of the ocean’s life-giving system. It is rich and fascinating, stirring and mind-expanding, and utterly essential — Keggie Carew, author of BEASTLY A wonderfully wise and richly researched examination of our blue planet’s extraordinary and precarious living seas; I learned so much from this delightfully detailed book. Scales is the perfect guide on a dive into these fascinating ocean ecosystems, whence the reader surfaces newly galvanised to protect its wonders — Gaia Vince, author of NOMAD CENTURY Written by a highly articulate expert in the field, [it is] so comprehensive and insightful that it will be a long time before it’s surpassed — Tim Flannery * New Statesman (on THE BRILLIANT ABYSS) * Stylish, eloquent . . . Enthralling and richly expressed and highlights how closely our lives depend on the deep — Robin McKie * Guardian (on THE BRILLIANT ABYSS) * It is, indeed, weirdness all the way down, and Scales’s bestiary is a wonderful introduction to its variety…Scales’s enthusiasm for her subject is matched by a gift for visual evocation — Steven Poole * Daily Telegraph (on THE BRILLIANT ABYSS) * Scales’s great gift is for transmuting our awe at the wonders of the deep sea into a kind of quiet rage that they could soon be no more * New York Times Book Review (on THE BRILLIANT ABYSS) *